Welcome to Business Innovators Magazine…Please introduce yourself and a brief thumbnail sketch of your background.
CB: My name is Chris Cebollero and I’m a strategic and customer-focused business executive with close to 30 years of experience streamlining operations and positioning businesses for long-term growth. My career was spent in the healthcare field as the Chief Officer for the Emergency Medical Services field. As a matter of fact I was in charge of Medical Control for the Ferguson Crisis in Ferguson MO during the summer and fall of 2014. My skills as an executive coach, leadership developer and keynote speaker have supported hundreds of leaders. My experience allows me to combine my significant business leadership skills with my ability to optimize key processes allowing me to implement measurable change in organizations.
BI: What would you say is the area in business that you are most passionate about and why?
CB: Being able to share experiences with those in business allowing them to achieve their strategic goals and continue their business success, is something that is really satisfying. When we develop a partnership with organizations they are looking to you for hope, answers, and solutions to maximize their business development. Once the projects are completed, partners are happy and excited for the transformation and future of their business. That is something that fuels our success.
BI: How are you different than your competitors?
CB: Unlike other consultants that offer their own solutions, Cebollero & Associates Consultants develop solutions custom to your organization. We are not going to come into your business with a canned solution. We will listen to your challenges, interview your team and after a in-depth assessment of your business, a leadership/business development strategy will be constructed specifically for your organization.
BI: Please tell me about any recent business accomplishments that you are most proud of and why?
CB: We recently completed a partnership agreement with an organization that increased employee satisfaction by 73%, developed process improvement strategies increasing productivity by 22% which led to a substantial increase in customer satisfaction. That ended our year on a major high note.
BI: What Leadership qualities in Leaders do you most admire and why?
CB: To be successful business leaders need a foundation of three attributes being a desire for success, will power to work your business plan, and being persistent. If you do not possess these attributes, when adversity occurs strategic plans are forgotten and thrown out. Adversity occurs in business everyday, but having the desire to be successful, and persistent to see that plan come true is a foundation for business success. From there all the other successful leadership attributes are achieved. Without desire and persistence business fail daily.
BI: What has been a key element of your success?
CB: That’s a good question, one thing that I point to our firms success is a personal custom approach to assisting in your business development. Being able to listen to our partners, and develop goals to achieve their future success has been a great strategy for us.
BI: What are some of business projects that you are currently working on that you are excited about and why?
CB: We have gotten so many requests for continuing leadership education that we are presently developing an online portal for leadership classes. This will be discussion lead, narrated powerpoint, as well as video led presentations. There will be presentations in all areas of leadership that can be chosen in any sequence. We will also be able to offer specific leadership education based on your needs. So, if a partner wishes to continue the work we achieved onsite, we can develop solutions to continue that work as well. We are very excited to roll out this new resource late Q1 of 2016.
BI: What are 1 or 2 things you would like to say to a prospective client who stumbles across this interview?
CB: You always hear the saying If its not broke don’t fix it, or when you ask the question why do you do that, the answer is, “that’s the way we have always done it”. Well successful businesses continually transform to meet their customers needs. For that reason you need to continue to grow and challenge organizational processes to ensure best practices. Then when someone asks why do you do that the answer can be because its efficient, cost effective and a best practice. Next for leaders in business its vital you increase your leadership effectiveness and continually grow your leadership knowledge. With this new education you can train your leadership team and workforce to increase their core leadership knowledge. This will increase employee satisfaction, which leader to increasing employee engagement, thus increasing productivity leading to a better customer experience.
BI: What is your favorite part of being a leadership consultant assisting organizations?
CB: There are so many things I can point to as a favorite. Watching organizations engage their workforce and knowing that employees now enjoy coming to work and doing their jobs. We have to remember these are the employees we invited into our organizations to assist our success. We have to invest in them to ensure we keep our organization ahead of competitors. But the one thing that truly love is being a Motivational Speaker/Teacher. Standing in front of folks and teaching them about Persistence, Motivation, and increasing their Desire for success is what fuels my tank. I just love that part of my job.
